Distinctions in Power

Category: Power

1. Power over self, others, reality 2. Self-control, dominance, transcendence (science? technology?)

I want to catalyze the spiritual progress of ambitious people, and the most fruitful place to start looks like moving from one conception of power to another.

There’s a powerful instinct to feel your self worth strongly through watching your actions take effect in the world. The instinct is flexible, though, over many different kinds of effect. You can see the systems that exist (say, market competition) as attempts to use these instincts to produce good outcomes for all. Improvement in those systems means making use of the best forms of the instinct.

A will to power can manifest as a will to self control. Ultimate self-control can come in forms like achieving enlightenment (through an intensive meditative process over the course of years) and the process of building power is deeply introspective. Self-control that looks like completing special forces training (ex., BUDS) will fulfil a similar role, and the intensity of the egos that survive that training is a testament to this emotional thesis.

Perhaps these are just things that I like. Can I do this to myself? I have done this to myself. The question is about what goals are most worthy.

Most goals feel right but aren’t precisely specified. The way that a person feels about them isn’t precisely specified.

Moving from money as a form of status, or control as a form of statuts, to impact as a form of status is a pretty substantial psychological break.

There’s a world where outcomes matter and a world where they don’t matter (this is the same insight as my shift to AI from sport - do something that was worth doing objectively). There are so many companies which exist because they’re worthwhile companies and not because the missions that they accomplish are a good thing.

The goal of using markets to scale a process that is good up to industrial levels is deeply related.

Outcomes of companies could be ‘I have control over mass culture’ to deep tech where ‘humanity’s ability to generate energy has been increased by x%’.

Computational memetics appreciates this. The thing I’m actually fighting against is having money be an end in itself. Money based status hierarchies.

Counterargument - doing social well is as or more important than engaging with reality.

The difference between founding SpaceX and founding DoorDash. DoorDash valuation is 12.6B, SpaceX valuation is 33B. These are situations where at the outset you have a very different expectations about what the real world consequences of the company will be.

The question is how to control the status allocation.

The obvious place to start is in my own evaluation of status, and showing people the use of that status evaluator.

Source: Original Google Doc